Possibly the next case to be over turned due to faulty, flawed and discredited bitemark evidence. This book was written by the prosecutor in the case and describes the discovery of the evidence years after the murder, the attempts made to identify the biter and the following trial. Very self-congratulatory but the book provides some insight into the early days of bitemark evidence, when there was little scrutiny, and the esteem that the forensic dentists were held in – not only by the investigators but the court and jury.

The book also describes, but fails to recognise, an issue that is now well known – that bitemarks aren’t reliable. There were two odontologists in this case – and their initial views about the likely dental characteristics of the biter were very different – one described an individual with spacing, the other with a crowded mouth.

The paperback version of the book – available from Amazon here – shows the alleged bitemark. Its difficult to believe that anyone today would even call this a bitemark, much less have the willingness to link it to a suspect…..

]]>http://www.forensicdentistryonline.org/silent-witness-the-karla-brown-case/feed/0Video from Texas Committeehttp://www.forensicdentistryonline.org/video-from-texas-commitee/
http://www.forensicdentistryonline.org/video-from-texas-commitee/#respondFri, 04 Mar 2016 17:04:57 +0000http://www.forensicdentistryonline.org/?p=9953This is the video that just been released showing the landmark committee decision to recommend banning bitemark evidence in Texas Courts.

The video starts at the point that the committee begins the presentation by lead Counsel, Lynn Garcia, on the findings of the sub committee – and then you can watch the entire presentation and conclusions.

]]>http://www.forensicdentistryonline.org/video-from-texas-commitee/feed/0Chaney freed as court renders bitemarks as junk sciencehttp://www.forensicdentistryonline.org/chaney-freed-as-court-renders-bitemarks-as-junk-science/
http://www.forensicdentistryonline.org/chaney-freed-as-court-renders-bitemarks-as-junk-science/#respondTue, 13 Oct 2015 09:54:40 +0000http://www.forensicdentistryonline.org/?p=7527Yesterday we reported the case of Steven Chaney who was convicted largely on the basis of a bitemark – and one that was linked to a spurious statistical claim that 1 to a million chance of it being caused by someone else.

Late yesterday afternoon the case went before the Dallas Court where the judge freed him after he had spent more than a quarter of a century behind bars. Hales (one of the two forensic dentists who testified for the prosecution) did the decent thing – he said that his evidence was wrong, not only under the current standards, but also those of the time.

That this has happened in Texas will be worrying for the ABFO who find themselves arguing to keep bitemarks in Court as their science is assessed by the Forensic Science Commission. Chris Fabricant of the NY Innocence Project stated:

When the Texas Forensic Science Commission reviews the validity and reliability of bite mark evidence … you’re going to find a lot more Steven Mark Chaneys

Of course in order to find these – the forensic dentists will need to come forward and identify cases – and the commission has stated that this should be done within a context not of blame, but of seeking the truth. It may be difficult to identify these cases – not least as it is typically only appeals that get published with any level of detail.

Of course cases such as this don’t fundamentally undermine bitemark analysis – many will argue that the fault lies in the analyst rather than the evidence per se – however, while a few years ago it was easy to look at experts such as West and state this was true there is now mounting evidence that many, many experts have got it wrong.

Chaney’s release needs to be approved by the Appeals Court, but, given the prosecutors comment that Chaney was denied his constitutional right to a free trial (and that she would undertake to assess “actual innocence”) this seems to be assured.

Chaney can now claim membership of the Bitemark Exoneree Club – over 24 people whose convictions have been overturned as a result of faulty, and at times fraudulent, bitemark evidence. A dubious honour.

The case of Eddie Lee Howard (whose Supreme Court case we featured here) is likely to be the next case heard – as well as the FSC meeting in November.

2015 and 2016 will pivitol times for bitemarks – no one knows quite where the science will end up.

]]>http://www.forensicdentistryonline.org/chaney-freed-as-court-renders-bitemarks-as-junk-science/feed/0DNA From Teeth – The Lynn Breedan Storyhttp://www.forensicdentistryonline.org/dna-from-teeth-the-lynn-breedan-story/
Sun, 02 Aug 2015 16:46:38 +0000http://www.forensicdentistryonline.org/?p=4504This is a fascinating case told in the Medical Detectives series. The case involves identification from teeth in two ways – the first, the identification of the victim from their dental records (using the presence of a mesiodens to assist) and secondly, the identification of the potential suspect – by linking DNA from the victim to that found on his possessions.

Identification of the victim – this case presents a classic example of the need for dental identification – that of remains that cannot be visually identified, here due to extensive burning of the body. Teeth withstand most post and peri mortem assaults and hence are useful repositories of identification evidence. Here the odontologist was able to ascertain a tentative ID, gain access to antemortem records, and then compare these to post mortem records. A match was made.

DNA from teeth – however the dentition of the victim in this case was used for more than just identification – it became a key link to the suspect. Enamel is the hardest structure in the human body and acts as an armoured coating for the biological material within. In this case an un-erupted third molar was used but today, with PCR techniques, any tooth could be used irrespective of its restorative condition.

This case serves to demonstrate the substantivity of the human dentition following post mortem assaults and shows that the dentition is not only a source of physical evidence, but that it can be used to provide biological material for DNA analysis. This can be important when only a few teeth are recovered or in cases where there are co-mingled remains.

]]>The Biggar Murder & Warren Harveyhttp://www.forensicdentistryonline.org/the-biggar-murder-warren-harvey/
Sat, 01 Aug 2015 06:53:10 +0000https://forensicdentis.wpengine.com/?p=1187In a tribute to Warren Harvey, a pioneering forensic dentist in the UK, Dr Allan Gaw presents the details of the Biggar Murder. One of Harvey’s greatest cases, and certainly one of the most comprehensive write ups of a case ever seen, was the Biggar Murder from Scotland. A case in which bitemarks were the principle evidence against the accused (Hays) and the analysis included a round up of all potential suspects in a small Scottish village. Harvey spent over 400 hours preparing the case, and his testimony lasted some five hours. This is combined with extensive research surrounding the individual characteristic on the accused teeth – a small cuspal maldevelopment.

The case is presented in the former Journal of the Forensic Science Society, now known as Science and Justice and a copy of the paper is available for viewing here. The 63 page article describes in detail the case circumstances, the evidence and the analysis including the assessment of multiple suspects, 29 sets of dental models in total. The paper also provides a literature review of the science of bitemarks at the time, 1968, it is somewhat sobering to see that very little has changed since this time and Harvey’s call to ensure that further research is undertaken to understand these injuries and their forensic significance is a relevant today as it was then. The Daily Record also ran a piece on the murder, and its impact, in 2007 – you can see this here.

The Case

On the morning of August 7, 1967, a 15-year-old schoolgirl was found murdered in a small Scottish town. She had been beaten and strangled, and her right breast appeared to have a bite mark. If a single case can define a career, what was to become known as the Biggar murder would define that of Dr Warren Harvey.

Warren Harvey (1914-1976)

Linda Peacock’s Body

Born in Staffordshire, Harvey was the elder son of a doctor. He was educated at Shrewsbury and then moved south to obtain his medical and dental degrees at Guy’s Hospital. He spent the war as a dental officer in the RAF and afterwards built a successful private dental practice in London, as well as being consultant dental surgeon to the Royal Masonic Hospital in Hammersmith. In 1962 he was diagnosed with the throat cancer that would force his early retirement two years later. He moved from the bustle of London to the Ayrshire coast, but his retirement was short-lived. Soon after moving to Scotland he was recruited by the Glasgow Dental Hospital as locum consultant and as lecturer in the Department of Dental Surgery at Glasgow University – posts he would hold for the next 10 years.

It was while working in Glasgow that he was asked to consult on the Biggar murder – a case which the judge would describe as “grave, serious and in some ways unique”. The victim, Linda Peacock, from the small Lanarkshire town of Biggar, had been assaulted in the town cemetery. Although she had not been raped there was clear evidence of a sexual motive for her attack – in particular the bite mark on her right breast was the most important clue. The bite, because of its shape, was obviously not that of an animal and could not have been self-inflicted because of its position. The investigating team quickly realised that the girl’s killer had left his dental “fingerprint” behind.

Round up

The close proximity to the murder scene of an approved school for juvenile convicts presented an obvious line of enquiry for the police. Some 29 inmates and staff were identified as suspects and dental impressions were taken of their teeth. These impressions were anonymised and Harvey and his colleagues studied them, excluding all but five suspects, who gave further impressions.

A single set – Number 11 – was consistent with the bruising on Linda Peacock’s breast. Only at this point was the code broken and Harvey informed that these were the impressions of 17-year-old Gordon Hay. Harvey sought a warrant to examine Hay’s teeth for a third time, which was granted by the sheriff.

The bitemark

The main evidence linking Hay with the murder was the unusual pattern of bruising associated with the bite mark – small, ring-shaped contusions with pale centres. Hay’s teeth showed signs of cuspal maldevelopment with a raised circular edge – exactly the pattern that might have caused the unusual bruises. But if the court was to be convinced of Hay’s guilt, Harvey would have to show that such a dental defect was uncommon. Harvey studied 1,000 canines in almost 350 boys aged 16-17 and found only two teeth with pits similar to those of Hay and none in opposing canines in the same mouth.

At the trial the following spring, Harvey presented this evidence along with detailed expert testimony on the links between Hay’s impressions and the bruising. He had spent over 400 hours preparing the case and would spend almost five hours in the witness box. It took the jury just two and a half hours to find Hay guilty of murder and because he was under 18 he was not given a life sentence but ordered to be detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure.

This was the first case in Scotland where the Crown relied on forensic odontology and the first in the UK where a murder conviction was secured based on the characteristics of a bite mark. Forensic dentistry was not completely new to the courts but it was still contentious. In his instructions to the jury the judge counselled:

“the law must keep pace with science…it usually lags a little behind but it does progress as scientific knowledge itself advances.”

Harvey’s continued ill-health finally forced him to retire properly in 1974 and he moved back close to his roots in the Welsh hills, where he died two years later.

Hay’s teeth

His long-awaited textbook, Dental Identification and Forensic Odontology, was published just two weeks before his death. Unfortunately, he did not live to see it hailed as a classic, but his commitment to clinical research continued to the end and he bequeathed his body to medical research. Despite being debilitated for 14 years by his cancer and its treatment, Harvey was able to develop and dominate a second career. He is rightly regarded as one of the founding fathers of forensic odontology in the UK and his work on the Biggar murder case as a watershed for that specialty.

Dr Allan Gaw is a clinical researcher and writer in Glasgow

As an update to this article there was an article published by Ronnie Laird in the Dental History Magazine. As one of the individuals involved in the case it makes interesting reading from the perspective of those involved. The article is available here for you to read and the relevant section begins on Page 8. For those of you interested in historical dental cases, instruments, treatments and artworks depicting dentistry throughout the ages, you may wish to consider visiting the History of Dentistry Magazine website.

“I no longer believe in bite-mark analysis,” forensic odontologist Michael West of Hattiesburg testified in a 2012 deposition. “I don’t think it should be used in court. I think you should use DNA. Throw bite marks out.”

On Tuesday, lawyers from the Mississippi Innocence Project will argue to the state Supreme Court that Howard deserves a new trial. The state says justices have already rejected these arguments in a previous appeal.

Howard, who turns 62 on Saturday, remains on death row, convicted of the 1992 rape and stabbing death of 84-year-old Georgie Kemp of Columbus.

Recently performed DNA tests reveal the presence of male DNA (other than Howard) on the bloody knife found at the murder scene. DNA tests on the nightgown and the rape kit have excluded Howard as well.

There was no DNA evidence presented at his trial. Instead, West became the major witness to link Howard to the crime, testifying a bite mark he found on her body — after it had been exhumed —uniquely matched Howard’s teeth.

West told jurors he could tell from another mark that Kemp was “fighting for her life” when this bite was inflicted. It was unclear how he supposedly knew this.

For many years, much of West’s work went unchallenged, and he bragged of his accuracy, once declaring his error rate was “something less than my Savior, Jesus Christ.”

But in the years since, his work has been discredited. His bite-mark identifications implicating Levon Brooks and Kennedy Brewer led to their wrongful convictions.

Together, the two Mississippi men spent a total of more than three decades behind bars until DNA proved them innocent and identified the real culprit, Justin Albert Johnson, now imprisoned for raping and killing the two 3-year-old girls.

Even after their exonerations in 2008, West insisted to The Clarion-Ledger that his bite-mark identifications of Brooks and Brewer were correct.

In trial after trial, he told jurors dental impressions were as unique as fingerprints, giving jurors the idea crimes could be solved strictly by identifying bite marks on bodies.

In 2009, the National Academy of Sciences issued a report, concluding there was no basis in science for forensic odontologists to conclude someone is “the biter,” excluding all other suspects.

Four years later, the American Board of Forensic Odontology changed its guidelines to bar such testimony.

A recent study by the group found wide variances in opinions among experts studying photographs of bite marks, many of them disagreeing on patterns and even if they were human bite marks.

An Associated Press analysis in 2013 found at least two dozen defendants convicted or charged with rape and murder using bite-mark evidence have been exonerated since 2000 — many after spending more than a decade in prison.

West has told The Clarion-Ledger the science behind bite marks “is not as exact as I had hoped.”

On Feb. 2, 1992, fire fighters responded to a fire, and when they did, they found Kemp dead and partly undressed in her Columbus home.

She had been beaten, stabbed to death and the trauma suggested she had been sexually assaulted. A rape kit found no semen.

Six days later, authorities charged Howard, a sex offender just released from prison, with the crime.

After sitting in jail a week, Howard, described in documents as having mental issues, wrote a note to a deputy, wanting to be taken to the crime scene, saying it “might bring back some memories to him” and that “the case was solved.”

But when Howard was taken there, he told the officer that it “did not bring back any memories.” Howard again repeated that “the case was solved” and that “five or six other individuals” had been involved and to “keep investigating the case.”

An officer testified Howard asked if he thought he was crazy: “I said, ‘No man, I don’t think you’re crazy,’ and he said, ‘Well, I’m not. I’m not crazy. I had a temper, and that’s why this happened.’ ”

The officer testified he believed this was a confession.

After working with Howard, his court-appointed lawyers talked of their client’s paranoid behavior, one of them telling the judge, “I’m not sure he’s capable of assisting in his own defense much less carrying his own defense out … I do not feel that this defendant is in touch with reality.”

Despite that, the judge let Howard represent himself at trial, ending in his conviction and death sentence.

The trial proved such a disaster the state Supreme Court in 1994 ordered a new trial. Justices concluded Howard was incompetent to represent himself and that numerous articles had raised questions about the reliability of bite-mark identification.

In the second trial, now represented by defense counsel, Howard heard a new witness, his former girlfriend Kayfen Fulgham testify that during sex, he sometimes bit her.

The day after the murder, she said Howard smelled “like burnt clothes or something, you know, wood, like smoke.”

When she asked Howard about it, she said “he just brushed it off.”

None of these claims can be found in her original two-page statement to police.

In his closing statement, District Attorney Forrest Allgood praised West as a visionary.

“The progress of mankind has been carried forward on the backs of people like Michael West,” he said. “The church threatened to burn Copernicus (actually Galileo) because he dared to say that the planets didn’t revolve around the earth. So it was with Michael West.”

The jury convicted Howard, and once again, he was sentenced to death.

This time on appeal, the state Supreme Court upheld the conviction, rejecting the claim that defense counsel had been incompetent in failing to call a single witness, including a witness to rebut West’s identification.

Three forensic odontologists, hired by the defense on appeal, concluded three bite marks West pointed out in this case aren’t visible in autopsy photographs, “nor were the alleged bite marks visible by the naked eye or noted in the autopsy report.”

Instead, West testified he saw the marks by using an ultraviolent light — a technique they questioned.

At trial, Howard’s defense lawyers failed to call any of his family to ask jurors to spare his life.

If they had, Howard’s sister, Pearlie Mae Howard, said she would have told jurors she “never knew Eddie to be violent or have a mean streak. … I never saw anything like that out of Eddie.”

New DNA tests conducted in Kemp’s murder could provide additional clues. The results have never been tested against other possible suspects.

Between 1996 and 1998, five other senior citizens were killed in their homes in Columbus.

Authorities discovered the body of 61-year-old Robert Hannah on Oct. 13, 1998, when his house caught on fire — the same as Kemp’s house. Two other victims were stabbed, just as Kemp was.

No one has ever been prosecuted for the killings.

If ever called to the witness stand again, West testified he would have to say that bite-mark identifications aren’t reliable enough to be used in court. “I can no longer rely on bite marks as a truth.”

Man serving life term loses bid to overturn murder conviction

The California Supreme Court says that William Richards, 63, had failed to prove his innocence in the 1993 killing of his wife, even though forensic evidence used against him was later discredited.

“But when you’ve got the expert who testified for the prosecution, who comes back and revisits the evidence and says, ‘You know, the state of the science now tells me that my conclusions then were either incorrect or exaggerated or misleading,’ that is incredibly powerful in any given case,” [Talking about bitemark evidence].

William Richards was convicted of brutally murdering his wife and is serving 25 years to life. The evidence against him was mostly circumstantial and two different juries were unable to reach a verdict. A third trial was aborted because the judge recused himself. But at the fourth trial, the San Bernardino County prosecutor introduced for the first time testimony about a lesion on the victim’s hand. Forensic dentist Norman Sperber analyzed an autopsy photograph during the trial, pointing out marks that appeared to be spaces between the teeth of someone who had bitten the victim. Sperber told the jury that the apparent bite mark matched William Richards’ unusual dental structure — one so unique he estimated just one or two out of 100 people might have it. Richards was convicted in 1997. Ten years later, another forensic dentist corrected a distortion in the picture using photo-editing software.

“If I had known that technology would help me be more accurate, I definitely wouldn’t have testified as I did,” Sperber says.

He now believes Richards could not have made the bite mark and questions if it’s even human. So given this change of view, and the fact that the BM evidence appeared to be crucial in securing the conviction, is Richards a free man? Nope. Read the court ruling here(a good read on the case, the arguments and the forensics as well as the dissenting view) and visit the California Innocence Projects page here.You can read the Amicus Curiae for the case here – which demonstrates that not only was Sperber’s evidence discounted by the expert himself, but that it was crucial to the conviction of Richards.

Listen to an NPR piece on the case, and the issue of forensic experts who want to change their mind…

….

This case is of particular forensic dental interest as the odontologist changed their mind about the evidence and interpretation. This was following several years, and a lot of advances in the science and surely should be commended – the concept of a dogmatic witness is not a good one – however, the California Court was not supportive.

A jury convicted Richards after a photo of what was thought to be a bite mark on the victim’s hand was submitted as evidence at trial.

SAN FRANCISCO — A San Bernardino County man serving a life sentence for the murder of his wife lost a lengthy battle Monday to overturn his conviction, even though forensic evidence used against him was later discredited. In a 4-3 decision, the California Supreme Court said that William Richards, 63, had failed to prove his innocence. Monday’s ruling established a high hurdle for overturning convictions that stem from inaccurate scientific evidence. The majority said forensic evidence, even if later recanted, may be deemed false only in narrow circumstances. “The falsity of the trial evidence must be proved,” Justice Joyce L. Kennard wrote for the majority. “Otherwise, every criminal case becomes a never-ending battle of experts over subjective assertions that can never be conclusively determined one way or the other.” After two trials ended in hung juries, a third panel heard new evidence about a crescent-shaped mark on the hand of Richards’ wife, Pamela, that implicated him in her death.

A forensic dentist testifying for the prosecution identified the lesion from a photograph as a bite mark that matched Richards’ teeth. The expert said only about 2% of the population would have matched the mark. The third jury convicted Richards in 1997, and he was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. Ten years later, the expert reviewed the photograph after it had been enhanced with new technology to provide a clearer picture. He ruled out Richards as the source. Other forensic dentists also said Richards’ teeth did not match the mark. After a hearing in 2009, San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Brian McCarville overturned Richards’ conviction, concluding that new evidence pointed “unerringly” to his innocence. An appeals court later reinstated the conviction.

Once the distortion has been corrected, the forensic dentist changed their opinion on the likely cause of the injury

The question before the California Supreme Court was whether the original bite mark testimony constituted false evidence, which is strong grounds for a retrial. The majority said Richards had failed to prove the original bite mark testimony was false because “experts still could not definitively rule out petitioner’s teeth as a possible source of the mark” during the 2009 hearing. Justice Goodwin Liu disagreed. In a dissent joined by Justices Kathryn Mickle Werdegar and Ming W. Chin, Liu noted that three of four dental experts who testified at the 2009 hearing ruled out Richards as the source of the mark, and a fourth refused to give an opinion. All four experts agreed that the original photograph used at trial was too poor to support scientific conclusions, even though the prosecution witness asserted at the time that he could infer the source of the lesion, Liu said. “This is not a case in which a habeas corpus evidentiary hearing has devolved into a fresh battle of the experts,” Liu wrote. “Instead, all of the experts provided testimony refuting critical facts underlying … trial testimony.”

Update on case March 2015 – California high Court Agrees to Reconsider the 1993 case:

A San Bernardino man convicted of murder in part because of discredited forensic evidence will have his case reviewed again by the California Supreme Court. Meeting in closed session, the justices decided unanimously Wednesday to hear a challenge by William Richards, who was found guilty of murdering his wife, Pamela, in 1991. The state’s high court examined Richards’ case in 2012 and refused to overturn his conviction. In response to that 4-3 decision, the Legislature passed a bill that said discredited forensic testimony amounts to false evidence and can be grounds for a new trial. The California Innocence Project asked the court to reconsider Richards’ case in light of the new law. Richards, 65, was tried three times. Juries deadlocked in the first two trials. In the third, a dental expert testified that a lesion on the Pamela’s body was a bite mark that matched Richard’s unusual tooth pattern. The jury convicted. The expert later recanted, saying he had been mistaken.

Two of the justices who voted against Richards in 2012 are no longer on the court. In a brief order, the court asked the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to respond to Richards’ challenge.

A long and lengthy legal battle has a new chapter today (14th March 2014) as the State of Ohio Court of Appeal reverses the decision of a lower Court and refuse an appeal brought by Douglas Prade against his aggravated murder conviction. The trial court stated:

[b]ite mark evidence….provided the basis for the guilty verdict

This is a fascinating case and features a controversial bitemark and a number of experts who have testified over the years in the case. One of the originally testifying dentists – Lowell Levine features in this case and for this appeal the Court heard from Dr Frank Wright and Dr Mary Bush. Each had differing views over the utility of the bitemark.

The trial court noted that neither Dr. Bush, nor Dr. Wright had tendered an opinion with regard to the specific bite mark left on Margo, but that both had criticized either the science behind bite mark identification or the bite mark identification testimony that had been admitted at Prade’s trial. The trial court determined that “both experts’ opinions call into serious question the overall scientific basis for bite-mark identification testimony.

Interestingly the bitemark was also a source of DNA. The appeal was based on the fact that analysis of this could not identify Prade, indeed the court found that “..without a – however, the complexities of the analysis, and the risk of contamination appear to have negated this evidence.

When examining the bitemark evidence the judges state that, as in many other cases, the trier of fact (jury) were given all the details of the bitemark, that there were varied opinions provided, and that they were clear that bitemarks had been wrongly analysed in the past:

As for the dental experts, the jury was essentially presented with the entire spectrum of opinions on the bite mark at trial. That is, one expert testified that Prade was the biter, one testified that the bite mark was consistent with Prade’s dentition, but that there was not enough there to make any conclusive determination, and the third testified that Prade lacked the ability to bite anything. Moreover, the expert who definitively said Prade was the biter, Dr. Marshall, also said that the expert who determined a definitive inclusion could not be made (Dr. Levine) was “one of the leading bite[]mark experts in the country.” The jury also heard testimony during cross-examination that dental experts often disagree and that bite mark testimony has led to wrongful convictions. In short, the jury had much of the same information before it at trial that the experts at the PCR stage presented and, in light of all that information, found Prade guilty

In essence there is a view that the bitemark evidence – for better or worse, was placed into context and the jury should apply an appropriate weight given the differences of opinions and the conclusions reached. It should also be noted that the DNA analysts also reached different conclusions when considering why Prade was excluded as the source. So even DNA is not impervious to the mixed opinions of testify experts. You can download the entire judgement here

A further development on the 20th March is that, just hours after he was taken in to custody, the Supreme Court issued a ruling that led to Douglas Prade’s release.

“This has been a crazy, day but you guys forget I spent 15 years in hell,” Prade said upon his release Thursday.

The former Akron police captain was declared not guilty of his wife’s murder more than one year ago and was released from prison. But Wednesday, the 9th District Court of Appeals issued a ruling saying his release was a mistake, and he was taken back into custody Thursday morning. Prade appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court, which issued a stay in his case on Thursday. Prade was released — again — Thursday at around 2:30 p.m., and is to remain free while the Supreme Court reviews his case.

A status hearing took place at 9 a.m. Thursday at the Summit County Common Pleas Court. Prade arrived about a half hour before. His sister Yvonne was with him along with Lisa Gates, one of his attorneys. If prosecutors have their way, he will head back to prison to serve out the rest of his life sentence. Prade spent 14 years behind bars after he was convicted in the 1997 shooting death of his wife, Dr. Margo Prade, outside her Akron medical office. Last year, a Summit County judge ordered his release from prison after his attorneys argued the was DNA evidence on Dr. Prade’s lab coat did not belong to Douglas Prade.

When this piece of evidence went back to the jury, we don’t know if jurors handled it, we don’t know if that was jurors’ DNA on it,” said Brad Gessner, assistant county prosecutor. “We know that when the FBI initially tested this, there was no saliva on it. So as the court said, how do you argue about all of this saliva all these years later when there was none there to start with?”

The 9th District Court of Appeals ruled that the Summit County judge who declared Prade not guilty “abused her discretion” and said that Prade’s DNA results were “questionable” and only “generated more questions than answers.”

My sister is gone and she’s resting in peace and we’re still suffering, but for them to let Douglas out like they did, I was just so outdone the way they let him out,” said Veronica Sadler, Margo Prade’s sister.

October 2014 (1)

AKRON, Ohio — A Summit County judge could determine on Thursday if former Akron Police Capt. Douglas Prade’s murder case will be sent back to trial.The Ohio Ninth District Court of Appeals on Tuesday rejected Prade’s latest attempt to have the appeals panel reconsider its previous ruling that negated his exoneration and a request for a new trial. The case will now go to Summit County Common Pleas Court Judge Christine Croce, who set a hearing on the case for Thursday. Croce can order a new trial or deny Prade a new trial. Attorneys will have the option to appeal Tuesday’s decision to the Ohio Supreme Court.

Prade was convicted of killing his wife in 1998 by a jury trial and the case has been appealed several times since. A judge in 2013 exonerated Prade because of DNA evidence from someone other than Prade was found on Margot Prade. The Ninth District Appeals judges overturned now-retired Summit County Common Pleas Judge Judy Hunter’s exoneration and later vacated the 2013 order for a new trial because it included conditions based on another court’s future ruling. Prade’s attorneys argued that civil and federal procedures would allow the case to be retried. “Because the rules cited apply to specific situations that are not applicable here, we are not persuaded by (Prade’s attorneys’) arguments,” the one-page decision says.

October 2014 (2)

The decision on a new trial for former Akron Police Capt. Douglas Prade in the slaying of his ex-wife was put on hold Thursday during a Summit County court hearing. Afterward, Prade left the courtroom in orange county jail clothes and shackles under escort by sheriff’s deputies. Common Pleas Judge Christine Croce took the matter under advisement, then ordered Prade to be returned to state prison where he will be held under protective custody while his lawyers prepare an appeal to the Ohio Supreme Court. Prade, who has been jailed since July 25, said nothing during the hearing. But two older sisters of Dr. Margo Prade, who was shot to death in her office parking lot on the morning before Thanksgiving in 1997, had plenty to say. Standing next to her sister as Cleveland TV crews and reporters asked for her reaction at seeing her former brother-in-law again, Veronica Sadler said: “I’m just tired of all this. It’s wearing me out.”

“Physically, mentally, it’s wearing me out. I’ve been under a lot of stress, so every time this happens, I relive it over and over and over again,” she said. “You can’t forget,” her sister, Edith Shamberger, said. Prade, now 68, was freed in January 2013, after serving nearly 15 years for aggravated murder, under an exoneration order by now-retired Common Pleas Judge Judy Hunter. That order was based on a weeklong DNA hearing. After testimony by numerous forensic experts, Hunter found that Prade was excluded as the contributor to a central piece of crime-scene evidence: a bite-mark impression on a small section of fabric from Dr. Prade’s lab coat. Both sides have agreed, from the very outset of one of Akron’s most notorious crimes, that the killer bit her moments before the fatal shooting. Hunter’s ruling, including a conditional order for a new trial if her findings were overturned, was reversed in March by Akron’s 9th District Court of Appeals. The appeals court found overwhelming circumstantial evidence supporting Prade’s 1998 conviction, and discounted the DNA results as only raising more questions than answers. Croce had three choices after the 9th District refused last week to reconsider its decision. She could have ordered a new trial, denied a new trial, or set another evidentiary hearing on the matter. Croce said she would review the voluminous court records in the case, including Hunter’s 26-page exoneration order, and file a written decision on the new-trial issue. Prade’s defense team, meanwhile, has a Nov. 17 deadline for an appeal to the high court.

Sadler said the case would have been over long ago, with a sentence similar to the time Prade actually served, if he simply would have told the truth about what happened. She said she always has believed that her sister scratched Prade in the neck during a struggle, he became infuriated and shot her to death. “What he did was in anger. All he had to do was say, ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do it.’ Anybody could understand that, and the truth,” she said, “would have set him free.”

]]>Robert Lee Stinsonhttp://www.forensicdentistryonline.org/robert-lee-stinson-2/
Wed, 12 Mar 2014 12:53:14 +0000http://forensicdentis.wpengine.com/?p=914Robert Lee Stinson served over 23 years in a Wisconsin prison for a brutal rape and murder DNA proves he did not commit. He was convicted based on the improper and unvalidated expert testimony of a bite-mark analyst whose conclusions were uncontested at trial.

The Crime
Early in the morning of November 3, 1984, a neighbor passing through an alley on his way to work discovered the body of 63-year-old Ione Cychosz in a vacant lot behind her home. She had been raped, stabbed and beaten to death. Her clothing was scattered around the lot. Spermatozoa cells were found in a vaginal wash, but the number of cells retrieved was too few for identification purposes. Eight bite marks, inflicted prior to death, were also identified on the victim’s body.

The victim was last seen shortly after midnight, only a few hours before the murder, when a friend had dropped her off and watched her enter her building. The coroner later estimated that the time of death was between midnight and 2 a.m.

The Investigation
After examining the body, dental scientist Dr. Lowell Thomas Johnson worked with a police sketch artist and determined that the bite-marks on the body must have come from someone missing an upper front tooth.

The police questioned multiple suspects, including two men arrested for violent sexual assaults shortly after Cychosz was murdered. Both of these men had missing teeth consistent with Dr. Johnson’s sketch. Police investigators also visited 21-year-old Robert Lee Stinson, whose backyard was connected to the vacant lot where Cychosz’s body was discovered. While interviewing Stinson, the investigators told him a joke, and noticed both a missing front tooth and a crooked tooth when he laughed. Based on these observations, and his proximity to the crime scene, Stinson was arrested and charged with murder.

Trial
The only physical evidence against Stinson at his 1985 trial was the bite-mark testimony of two forensic odontologists. Dr. Johnson concluded that the bite marks “had to have been made by teeth identical” to Stinson’s, and claimed that there was “no margin for error” in his conclusion. The State also called Dr. Raymond Rawson, the chairman of the Bite Mark Standards Committee of the American Board of Forensic Odontologists, who testified that the evidence in the case was “high quality” and “overwhelming.” However, the prosecution’s experts failed to note that Stinson was missing a tooth in the place where the bite marks indicated a dentition.

While Stinson’s attorney moved to exclude the bite-mark testimony, he did not object to the qualifications of the State’s expert witnesses, nor did he call his own expert to testify, although one had been retained. According to Stinson’s attorney, he was unable to find qualified experts because Dr. Johnson had presented the results of his analysis at an odontological conference before the trial, and therefore many experts felt their analysis had already been tainted by Dr. Johnson’s conclusions.

Stinson also gave inconsistent accounts of his whereabouts at the time of the murder, but as the prosecution admitted at trial, the crux of their case was based on the bite mark analysis. After a three-day trial, Stinson was convicted of first-degree murder on the strength of the forensic testimony, and sentenced to life in prison. There was no other direct evidence linking him to the murder.

On appeal, Stinson argued that the bite-mark testimony was not credible and claimed that he had been denied effective assistance of counsel. At trial, Stinson had attempted to replace his appointed counsel, since his attorney had only been on the case for two weeks and had not had time to prepare an adequate defense. Stinson also claimed to have a personality conflict with his attorney. His appeal was denied, and his conviction was upheld.

Post-Conviction
The improper bite-mark testimony would eventually provide the spark that cleared Stinson, but it took 20 years. The Wisconsin Innocence Project accepted Stinson’s case in 2005, and sought DNA testing of saliva and blood-stains on the victim’s sweater, which ultimately excluded Stinson. Yet this would not be enough. Working with Christopher Plourd, a California forensic science expert and attorney, the Wisconsin Innocence Project re-examined the bite-mark evidence and determined that Stinson did not match the indentations. Moreover, a panel of four nationally recognized experts independently reviewed the findings and unanimously reached the same conclusion.

Dr. Johnson now works at Marquette University with the prosecutor who tried Stinson’s case. He stood by his conclusions, as did the prosecutor, who noted that, “nobody in the state of Wisconsin had done a bite-mark rape-murder case like this one before…. So we were really reinventing the wheel.”

The Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office did not oppose Stinson’s motion to overturn his conviction. On January 30, 2009, Circuit Judge Patricia McMahon granted the motion, and Robert Lee Stinson, then 44, was freed and his conviction was vacated. He had served more than two decades in prison for a crime DNA evidence proves he didn’t commit. After his release, the District Attorney’s office had six months to decide whether or not to retry him. Finally, at a hearing on July 27, 2009, prosecutors, after undertaking their own investigation, dropped all charges against Stinson.

Since his release, Stinson has moved into his sister’s Milwaukee home with her children. He also plans on writing a book about his wrongful conviction. He received $25,000 from the state of Wisconsin (the maximum allowed under the Wisconsin compensation law) and the state legislature is debating a special bill that would award him an additional $90,000.

On April 23, 2012, Moses Price Jr., 51, was charged with second-degree murder for the murder of Cychosz after he was linked to the killing by DNA found on the victim’s clothing. Price, who is serving a 35-year sentence for a 1991 murder of a Milwaukee man, also gave a statement to authorities that he followed the victim after she got off a bus, then had a “blackout” and when he came out of it, he was on top of the woman and had a knife in his hand.

]]>Ray Kronehttp://www.forensicdentistryonline.org/ray-krone-2/
Tue, 11 Mar 2014 09:28:49 +0000http://forensicdentis.wpengine.com/?p=810This is one of our series concerning wrongful convictions related to bitemark evidence. Certainly the Krone case was one of the highest profile cases involving bitemarks. We have collected a range of resources here in relation to the case. If you own copyright to any of them and object to them being used in this way – please contact us. Materials are collected for educational purposes. Lets start with a CNN review of the case from 2011 – it gives a good overview of the case and also features ABFO diplomate Lowell Levine talking about the science of bitemarks. Ray Krone was the 100th person released on the basis of a wrongful conviction in the United States.

Case Details

On the morning of December 29, 1991, the body of the thirty-six year old victim was found, nude, in the men’s restroom of the Phoenix, Arizona bar where she worked. She had been fatally stabbed, and the perpetrator left behind little physical evidence. Blood at the crime scene matched the victim’s type, and saliva on her body came from someone with the most common blood type. There was no semen and no DNA tests were performed.

Investigators relied on bite marks on the victim’s breast and neck. Upon hearing that the victim had told a friend that a regular customer named Ray Krone was to help her close up the bar the previous night, police asked Krone to make a Styrofoam impression of his teeth for comparison. On December 31, 1991, Krone was arrested and charged with murder, kidnapping, and sexual assault.

At his 1992 trial, Krone maintained his innocence, claiming to be asleep in his bed at the time of the crime. Experts for the prosecution, however, testified that the bite-marks found on the victim’s body matched the impression that Krone had made on the Styrofoam and a jury convicted him on the counts of murder and kidnapping. He was sentenced to death and a consecutive twenty-one year term of imprisonment, respectively. Krone was found not guilty of the sexual assault.

Krone won a new trial on appeal in 1996, but was convicted again, mainly on the state’s supposed expert bite-mark testimony. This time, however, the judge sentenced him to life in prison, citing doubts about whether or not Krone was the true killer.

It was not until 2002, after Krone had served more than ten years in prison, that DNA testing would prove his innocence. DNA testing conducted on the saliva and blood found on the victim excluded Krone as the source and instead matched a man named Kenneth Phillips. Phillips was incarcerated on an unrelated sex crime and, although he had lived a short distance from the bar where the victim worked, he had never been considered a suspect in her murder.

On April 8, 2002, Krone was released from prison and on April 24th, the District Attorney’s office filed to formally dismiss all charges against him. Murder and sexual assault charges have since been brought against Phillips.

Ray Krone spent more than a decade in prison, some of it on death row, before DNA testing cleared his name. He is the 100th former death row inmate freed because of innocence since the reinstatement of capital punishment in the United States in 1976. He was the twelfth death row inmate whose innocence has been proven through postconviction DNA testing. Prior to his arrest, Krone had no previous criminal record, had been honorably discharged from the military, and had worked in the postal service for seven years.

More Resources

Here is a newspaper article from the Arizona Republic giving details of his release. There are further details in this edition of Justice Denied (a magazine and website concerned with wrongful convictions) – you can find details of Ray Krone’s case here.

You might like to read the Appellate Court judgement here – which describes the reasons for remanding for a new trial. Here is a copy of the petition filed to prevent DNA testing in this case – a procedure that ultimately demonstrated Krone’s innocence.

In Ray Krone’s Words

“I was the 100th person exonerated from death row. So, there was lots of media attention when I got out. On that first day, a reporter asked me, ‘Ray, given your faith in God, why do you think he left you in prison all those years?’

“How do you answer a deep question like that? It shot in my head, ‘Maybe it’s about the next 10 years.’”

Ray Krone was sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit. After serving more than 10 consecutive years in Arizona prisons, including 32 months on death row, he was successfully exonerated in 2002. His innocence was finally established after DNA tests proved another man had committed the murder of a female bartender:

“One time after my release, I was being interviewed, and so was my mom. I happened to pass the room in which the reporter was speaking with her. I heard my mom tell him, ‘Our family used to set a place at the table for Ray at every Thanksgiving and Christmas.’ To hear that, to think of what my mom went through, to hear her say, ‘We wondered what he was eating in prison,’that helped me realise how I need to do this for her, for my sisters, for all the people who have sat in a courtroom and been told that they are guilty when they are not.

“There was the time when I was testifying on behalf of Witness to Innocence, and a prosecutor said to me, ‘You’ve been exonerated. They got the guy who did it. You’re out now. See: the system works.’ I said, ‘Tell my mom the system works.’ He didn’t ask any more questions.

“So, now I’m speaking out for my friends, my family, for all the people who need me to tell my story. I was a Boy Scout, a postman…I was in the Air Force. If they could do it to me, they could do it anyone.”

Ray serves as the Director of Communications and Training for Witness to Innocence, the nation’s only organisation composed of, by and for exonerated death row survivors and their loved ones who are actively engaged in the effort to end the death penalty. As of December 2012, 142 people have been exonerated, thanks in part to the vigorous efforts of advocates who have brought their innocence to light.

David Love, Executive Director of Witness to Innocence, says that “exonerees” like Ray are powerful voices who change public perception about the death penalty.

“There are a host of reasons that people should be opposed to the death penalty, and who better to articulate those than the people who were innocently languishing on death row while the state plotted their murder…innocent people have been executed in the past, and if we don’t do something, innocent people will continue to be executed. Witness to Innocence is an exemplar of people who have been through a lot of pain and are trying to heal themselves and heal society.”

By sharing the stories of innocent people who were wrongly imprisoned, Witness to Innocence was instrumental in the abolition of the death penalty in Maryland in 2013, Connecticut in 2012, Illinois in 2011, New Mexico in 2009 and New Jersey in 2007. They also were a critical part of Wisconsin’s effective 2006 campaign to prevent the re-instatement of the death penalty.

“It’s difficult for those of us who are exonerated to tell our stories in a simple way that makes sense. During the time that we were locked up, there were multiple stories occurring simultaneously: our stories, what the prosecutors were doing, what our families were doing to prove our innocence, and what the police did. Lots of times, our stories went down a dead end and we had to backtrack, to re-start the process of ultimately being found innocent — and of us finding hope — all over again. And it’s difficult to keep the anger and bitterness in check when we tell these stories. Of all the tragedies and all the stuff we have to go through in our country and in our lives, this is one thing that may get better – hopefully we will succeed in abolishing the death penalty nationwide. Clearly exonerees make a difference: we enable people to see that mistakes are made. It’s a reason to get up in the morning, to keep patience.”